


I'm Getting Too Young for This Shit!

by SonjaJade



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Anxiety, Gen, Growing Up Too Fast, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-11 21:52:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10475217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SonjaJade/pseuds/SonjaJade
Summary: Sometimes, Ed really is just a kid who’s been dealt a bad hand.





	

_“Come, Edward…  Come with me, it’ll be alright.”  Trisha smiled at him, that sweet, soft smile that only his mother could wear, and he felt himself nod.  He stepped forward and grabbed her hand, but when he grasped it, the skin turned hot as fire, smoking and turning black, and she wouldn’t let go._

_“Mom!” he cried out, trying like hell to pull away from her grip.  He watched the blackness crawl up her arm at a deadly pace, watched her beautiful features twist and morph into that_ thing _he and Al had resurrected at the cost of their bodies…  “Let me go!” he roared._

_“But sweetheart, it’s so dark and lonely where I’ve gone!” the creature moaned in his mother’s voice.  “Come and keep your mother company!”  The thing’s hand shot through the hole in his side…  Ed winced and sucked in a sharp breath.  That’s right.  He’d been impaled when that building collapsed…  He screamed out in pain as the monster picked at the wound with razor sharp claws and stirred up the bleeding once again.  “It’s alright, my son.  When the darkness finally claims you, it’s peaceful, quiet.  There’ll be no more worrying about homunculi, that bastard colonel, or finding a way to get your body back.  You’ll be with me, and we’ll be together forever…”_

_Ed was sobbing, both in pain and in anger.  “I’ll never come with you!!  I can’t leave Al all alone!”_

_The thing’s eyes seemed to soften.  “Don’t worry, Ed.  He’ll be joining us soon enough.”_

He woke up screaming, kicking the bed sheets off of his legs and scrambling back towards the headboard of the bed, seemingly to absorb himself into the wall behind him.  When the old woman rushed in, he realized he was at the doctor’s office…  With a little coaxing from the doctor’s shrewd wife, he finally relaxed and slid back into bed, her covering him up and promising to bring him some warm tea and some hearty soup.  His nearly fatal injury, aggravated by his sudden movements, was aching and throbbing, and if that wasn’t bad enough, the medicine he’d been given for pain had made him a little lightheaded.  He eased back onto the pillow, thanking the nurse for the tea and leaving it to cool there on the bedside table.

Once he was sure she was gone, he let his brave mask slip for just a moment.  Ed jerked the pillow out from under his head and buried his face in it, crying like the scared kid he was.  He cried for the loss of his mother, a good woman gone way too soon.  He cried for the sin he and his brother had committed that had set them on this dark path to begin with.  He cried for the lost limbs, his brother’s lost body, he cried because it felt like they weren’t going to get anything back, that they would never find a way to do it without a philosopher’s stone.  He cried for the feeling of hopelessness that had settled in his guts and refused to leave, he cried because he was separated from Al… That he had almost _died_ … and no one he loved knew where he was...  It all hurt so much, and it was a lot for an immature fifteen year old boy to carry everyday.

His crying jag seemed to calm, and he was reduced to feeling tired and beaten.  His sniffles subsided, and the only evidence that he’d had a momentary breakdown were his red, puffy eyes.  He wished more than anything that Winry was here.  While he wouldn’t ever admit it, she always knew the right things to say to him to keep him from feeling like this.  And besides, he’d sort of come to think of that wrench upside the head as the equivalent of a hug now.  He heard Darius speaking with the nurse in the other room, and he quickly snuggled down into the bed, pretending to be asleep so as not to arouse suspicions.  It didn’t matter, they weren’t discussing him and no one disturbed him anyway.

He wondered as he drifted in and out of drug induced sleep how much longer it was going to take him and his brother to get their bodies back, whether or not his well of courage would dry up before that time came, and if it did, if he could force himself to do what needed to be done.  Eventually, the soft shadow of sleep enveloped him once again, this time giving him sweet dreams of a scantily clad Winry nursing him back to health and reassuring him that everything was going to be alright.


End file.
